Sopwith Dolphin - finished

There!

I never really thought I'd say this, but the Dolphin is finished. A bit of mud on the undercarriage, the Mini World Lewis gun painted and installed, and the pitot tube glued on again (twice), and there you are. I'm now going to find a display case for it, then do the scenic base. Matt from the Wargames Table has kindly lent me some static grass and Vallejo acrylics, so I'm going to be studying his blog closely to see how he does it.

Sopwith Dolphin - rigging finished

Phew, that's the rigging done.

Sopwith Dolphin - rigging continues

Rigging continues very slowly. I'd forgotten how fiddly it is. Anyway, I've settled into a routine where I do a few lengths per session and then, every so often, when I can summon up the courage, bring up the soldering iron and wave it over the ones I've done to tauten them up, like a big scary magic wand.

Sopwith Dolphin - rigging started

Well, sorry about the long silence. About 6 months ago, I seem to remember saying something to the effect that it was all over bar the rigging. Then I actually started doing the rigging, and suddenly I seemed to hit a brick wall. It's quite simple in principle, the technique I use, and I've used it on two previous projects (my only two previous projects, actually). You just prepaint some stretched sprue (see earlier post), cut lengths of it and stick the lengths into place. And that, in previous projects, was that.

Sopwith Dolphin - nearly finished

I've made a bit more progress this evening and suddenly it's nearly finished.

Sopwith Dolphin - Propeller

It's the last scratchbuilt detail. But it wasn't meant to be. I had assumed that I would find a suitable propeller in the spares box, but at the last minute I had a closer look at the plans and realised that whereas most British aircraft used a right-handed propeller, the Dolphin I, with its geared Hispano engine, needed a left-handed one. And would you believe it, there was not a single left-handed propeller in the spares box. Even when the search included not only two different kits of the SE5A (Revell and Roden), but also the early SE5 (Pegasus).

Sopwith Dolphin - Wheels

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I've made a bit more progress since the last once, as you can see. I've had another go at pinning the tail on the Dolphin, and I've added the undercarriage. Now that it's sitting up properly it's looking a bit more lively.